Google Glass signals a wearables revolution

Eyeing you up – The future will be bright in all those augmented realities. Google Glass is the wearable computer that responds to voice commands and displays information on a visual display.

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20 wearable technologies of the future – The dress that turns transparent when the wearer is aroused. Would you try it? Dutch design collective Studio Roosegaarde have developed a sensual dress called Intimacy 2.0 together with designer Anouk Wipprecht. Made of leather and smart e-foils, it 'explores the relationship between technology and intimacy'. The high-tech panels are stimulated by the heartbeat of the wearer. Initially opaque or white, they become increasingly transparent when exposed to an electric current -- in this case a beating heart.

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Don't sweat it – We might shout less at one another in the future, as it looks like we'll be wearing our hearts on our sleeves. Another garment that displays your emotions to the world is the GER Mood Sweater, by design lab Sensoree. Based on the technology of a classic lie detector test, it interprets emotions and displays mood instantly as an interactive light display. Blue means relaxed and red is nervous or angry.

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Dirt Vader – Rather than bringing dirt into your house, these shoes will clean it up. Looking like something out of Star Wars, the FOKI vacuum shoes are a concept from Indonesian product designer Adika Titut Triyugo. They are equipped with a pair of rotary cleaners on the sole of each shoe and a LED display on top that indicates battery life and cleaning progress. So be a trooper and go vacuum.

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Impact on the future – It's a love/hate thing. The cycling helmet can save your life, but it doesn't look good and tends to ruin your hair. Thankfully the future offers a solution -- the Hövding. A Swedish creation, the Hövding is an "airbag for cyclists". It's worn as a collar and only expands into a full helmet if you have an accident.

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Sweet vibrations – The future is all about leading a stress-free life and having all the solutions for all problems at hand. Literally. For example, if you wear Lark Pro's vibrating alarm bracelet, you can slip out of bed quietly without waking your partner. It's also designed to help insomniacs improve their sleeping patterns, by picking the optimal time in a sleep cycle to wake a user up.

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Smokin' hot – Don't like strangers approaching you? Then the Smoke Dress is a must-have. Designed by Anouk Wipprecht, the dress can suddenly visually obliterate itself through the emission of a cloud of smoke. Ambient clouds of smoke are created when the dress detects a visitor approaching, thus camouflaging itself within it's own materiality. Perfect if you are a fashionable socialite AND a misanthrope.

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What's your poison? – Tired of waiting forever at a bar before you finally get your mojito? Tired of over-crowded bars even? Soon, your best cocktail dress will also make the cocktails. The DareDroid dress uses medical technology, customized hardware and mood analysis to provide you with your favorite poison. Designed by Anouk Wipprecht.

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Fist-Bump your phone – One ring to rule them all! Use the NFC Ring, a UK-based Kickstarter project created by John McLear, to unlock doors, share pictures, share social network links, unlock phones and much more. Just fist-bump your phone or tablet or use an open-palm gesture to transfer the information. And it never needs charging. Booya!

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Light me up! – Shine bright like a diamond ... or be the star at futuristic rave parties. The GalaxyDress by CuteCircuit is embroidered with 24,000 full color LEDs, and is believed to be the largest wearable display in the world. The LEDs are extra-thin, flexible and hand embroidered on a layer of silk. Fabulous darling!

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Track it down – Doing exercise without monitoring yourself be rare in the future of wearable technology. And wearing a giant watch that counts your steps is so 2012. That's where the Misfit Shine necklace comes in. It's a physical activity tracker that you can hang around your neck, or put wherever your want. The Shine's 12 dots represent your daily activity goal.

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Shine on – Glow in the dark with the LumiDress. Made up of ultra-thin optical fibers woven together with other synthetic fiber this dress will light up the night.

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Emotidress – This concept dress called Bubelle by Philip's Design interacts with and predicts the wearer's emotional state by changing colors. A beautiful white can turn into a relaxed blue. Philip's dresses are made from high-tech materials and are still in the concept phase.

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Climate control – In the future, your dress might advise you to skips that romantic walk through the fields. It might tell you that the area's greenhouse gas levels are too high. Danish design company Diffus has created the Climate Dress. It's laced with hundreds of small LEDs that will respond to greenhouse gases. They will pulse slowly when the levels are normal and flash rapidly in highly polluted areas.

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Safety sock – Thanks to all those gadgets you can attach to your body, there will soon be no excuse not to exercise. And to avoid injuries in the future where everyone will jog to work, Sensoria Socks by Heapsylon have come up with sensor-equipped textile that couples with an activity tracker to identify injury-prone running styles. Then, using a simple app, it coaches the runner to reduce those tendencies.

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Story highlights

Paul Saffo: Current Google Glasses are doomed to become eBay collectibles

Saffo: But Glass signals a wearables revolution poised to sweep into our lives

He says similar devices are moving from personal to intimate spaces

Saffo: Info-glasses might be made obsolete by info-contact lens in the future

Google Glass is crazy fun, but don't worry if you missed your chance to buy a pair on Tuesday, when it went on sale to the public for $1,500.

While the current generation of Google Glass is doomed to become a clunky eBay collectible, it's nonetheless a leading indicator of a vast wearables revolution poised to sweep into our lives.

That is, if it can get past some hurdles as we speak. There's been anti-tech backlash against Google Glass. Not everyone is down with it -- for reasons such as privacy -- but when these challenges are overcome then we're in for some interesting times.

Simply put, the information revolution is moving from personal to intimate.

It is just the latest chapter in a long trend that began in the 1980s when computers arrived on our desktops. Then in the 1990s, the gizmos shrank into laptops and disappeared into our backpacks and briefcases.

With the arrival of smartphones a decade ago, our computers now fit into a pocket, becoming constant companions. At each stage of this evolution, our devices insinuated themselves ever deeper into our lives, performing ever more essential tasks and becoming ever more important info-companions.

Now our devices are poised to disappear. They will disappear into our lives as small, absolutely essential tools that we will notice only when we lose them.

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Info-glasses today are like PCs in 1984 -- they look cool but perform a few functions that aren't all that useful, such as taking pictures or surfing the Web while sitting in a bar with friends. But just as PCs quickly became vastly more useful than mere word processors, new info-glass apps will allow us to perform more essential tasks.

Professionals from surgeons to surveyors are already prototyping apps that help them work in smarter ways. On the personal front, imagine an app that uses face recognition to tell you the name of the acquaintance walking toward you and your spouse at a cocktail party, sparing everyone the embarrassment of a fumbled introduction.

This is just one example of what is coming. Just as we have been surprised by search and social media, we are certain to be astonished by the capabilities of the device sitting on the bridge of our nose.

The scale of surprise is certain to be huge because info-glasses are just one of a zoo of wearable devices that are coming into our lives. Health-centered devices such as the Fitbit are already wrapping themselves around our wrists, competing for space with a new generation of smart watches.

Other devices will live in our pockets and eventually will be woven into the fabric of the clothes we wear. Some devices are destined to become yet more intimate, living under our skin. Some will be serious medical devices. Others will be for sheer whimsy -- imagine a subdermal display that is in effect a changeable electronic tattoo. Hobbyist hackers today can buy an implantable RFID chip kit complete with injector for less than $100. Implant it in your hand and use it to talk with electronic door locks.

All of these devices will communicate with each other and info-glass successors to Google Glass are likely to become an important control panel for communication between wearables and their human owners. Bicyclists will use info-glasses as a heads-up display for everything from road speed and map route to heart rate and glucose levels.

Our new wearables will, with very few exceptions, also be in constant communication with cyberspace and real-time information systems. Parents who are out to dinner will be able to discretely listen in on the baby monitor back home or view streaming video off a bedroom webcam.

The arrival of Google Glass has resulted in a debate over where and when info-glasses can be worn. Just like similar debates over pagers, cell phones and smartphones in years past, wearables will likely be everywhere.

Besides, unlike smartphones, info-glass hardware is going to quickly shrink into near-invisibility. Within a few years, smart glasses will be indistinguishable from an ordinary pair of vintage 2014 specs.

And after that? How about info-contact lens that can check your vital signs?

And privacy? Forget about it. We are destined to become like tagged bears, constantly tracked, but too addicted to the data stream to switch our intimate devices off.